Advertisers may submit an advertisement (“ad”) set to a publisher. An ad set is a pre-bundled set of elements that make up an ad to be presented in the same way to all recipients. An ad set may be based on a most common denominator of the intended target recipients. For example, the ad set may be created in a way that works for the highest number of recipients.
Similar to the traditional print advertising model, the vendor may pay for these ad sets based upon the number of “impressions” (exposure to a particular advertisement) the ad receives. For example, a traditional print magazine may charge based on the number of subscribers, as that can be nearly directly translated into an estimated number of impressions. In online advertising, the metrics for impression may be more precise, such as by considering the number of times the ad was sent to a target device or audience.